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The complete guide to creating compelling marketing tweets

I like to think I’ve seen a lot of tweets, enough to know a good one when I see it.

So often, I am completely exasperated looking at the dadaist sludge that dribbles out of corporate and brand Twitter accounts. So I’ve decided to do something about it and write this complete guide to writing interesting tweets.

It’s somewhat subjective, but I’ve given at least 60 tweets here to illustrate my various points. I’ll define interesting as something funny/persuasive/compelling/thought-provoking/informative etc – pretty much any tweet that can draw the user’s attention.

There is a lot of ‘don’t’ as well as a lot of ‘do’, and of course, knowing your brand and your audience is key to interesting your followers.

Hopefully there’ll be some scenarios you recognise in here, and some reminders.

Please leave your pet hates and great loves in the comments below.

Learn how Twitter works. A pretty big one, this.

Verizon Support, I may have drastically misunderstood you. All I know is this is what I have seen on your Twitter account, and it flummoxes me incontrovertibly.

And remember, if you retweet a complaint like below and then @reply the user, your audience will see the retweet but not the @reply. So it looks like you’re randomly retweeting your critics in some dadaist display of defiance.

But you can’t be cryptic, or light on information, from a prosaic account. It just doesn’t intrigue us. This Microsoft Support tweet should let you know this is a short customer survey, and then perhaps offer an incentive.

…unless you add some trivia

Careful how you edit to 140

Not sure if you agree, but it’s often hard to get important messages into a tweet. It can be tempting to crowbar the message in by missing the odd word here and there.

Microsoft support does it here, and I think the whole tweet, and the phrase ‘working to resolve ASAP’ sounds a bit fevered, a bit seat-of-the-pants, and like perhaps Microsoft isn’t in control? Take your time and be grammatically correct.

Windows RT 8.1 update temporarily removed from Windows Store. Situation affecting small number of users. Working to resolve ASAP.

Use your tie-ups

This should be second nature. You’ve got all those expensive sponsorships, so blimmin’ use them and tweet about all your stars. Adidas does it right here, celebrating Wilson Kipsang’s recent marathon world record.

You can’t avoid irony, but keep an eye out for the big ones

Google is too big to need to worry about this, and that’s why it can get away with the tweet below in the wake of the NSA revelations.

But you are not Google (unless you are) and you need to confront reality but also not pull it on top of you. Here at Econsultancy we talk a lot about mobile optimisation, but our own site is not yet optimised for mobile (happening as we speak), so we’re aware of this problem.

Recommended

Got ya! I make absolutely no apology, I am a massive Halloween fan. If I could dress up like Jason Voorhees and knock on my neighbour’s doors demanding handfuls of sweets all year round, I would.

If only the world’s various brands had the same commitment. Then that ghostly M&Ms advert on the left would never have to disappear. Still, I suppose Christmas marketing has to roll out at some point, so this is all just a pipe dream.

Let’s take a look at which brands are making the most out of this most evil, witch-filled and sugar-high fueled of holidays.

A new month, a new checkout abandonment survey hits the inbox. Here’s the number one cause of checkout abandonment: unacceptable delivery costs. What is this madness?

The study, by eDigitalResearch and IMRG, found that 77% of online shoppers have abandoned their basket in the past year, with 53% citing unacceptably high delivery costs as the main reason for bailing out.

Already, alarm bells are ringing. Many years ago we published some best practice research on conversion rate optimisation, and one of our key recommendations was to avoid sending people into the checkout area too early. Before they enter, they should have all of the key facts. That means delivery information, among other things.

Yet this latest checkout abandonment study found that 26% of shoppers placed an item in their basket just ‘to check delivery costs’.

As I write this energy supplier nPower is currently in the midst of a mini-Twitter storm following announcements of an 11% price hike about to hit consumers, but the backlash is nothing compared to the furious storm that hit British Gas last week following a similar price increase.

So what made British Gas the subject of so much fury, and how could they have handled the situation better?

According to a newly-published study published by Pew, nearly three-quarters of Facebook users polled said they didn’t know that Facebook generates and stores data about their interests and traits, and, when they came to learn this, over half indicated that they were uncomfortable with Facebook’s practice.

Mastercard, the third-largest credit card processor in the US, has announced a new policy that will make it more difficult for some businesses to automatically convert free trials into recurring subscriptions.